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DT 8 World WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 19, 2016 SOUTH ASIA Afghanistan, Taliban hold secret talks in Qatar The Taliban and the Afghan government restarted secret peace talks in September and have held two rounds of discussions in Qatar, Britain’s Guardian newspaper reported on Tuesday. Citing a Taliban official, the Guardian said a senior American diplomat was present at the meetings in Qatar, where the Islamist group has a diplomatic office. REUTERS INDIA Odisha hospital fire kills 22 At least 22 people were killed when a fire broke out at a private hospital in India’s eastern state of Odisha on Monday. The fire erupted in the dialysis ward of the SUM hospital’s critical-care unit in the state capital, Bhubaneswar, public health officials said. Many of the 22 dead were elderly people who had suffocated to death. REUTERS CHINA China’s Hainan shuts down as typhoon Sarika hits Typhoon Sarika lashed China’s Hainan province on Tuesday, with torrential rain and winds of up to 162km per hour forcing authorities on the southern island to shut schools and halt transport services. Rail services were suspended on Monday and 250 flights were cancelled at the provincial capital Haikou’s international airport. REUTERS ASIA PACIFIC Vietnam, US launch Danang dioxin clean-up Vietnam and the US on Tuesday launched the 2nd phase of a dioxin clean-up in Danang, where millions of liters of Agent Orange were stored during the war between the former enemies. The US sprayed the defoliant over large swathes of southern jungle during the Vietnam War to flush out Viet Cong guerrillas, and Vietnamese victims’ groups have long blamed the toxic residue for deformities and disease. AFP MIDDLE EAST Russia halts Aleppo strikes Moscow announced Tuesday that Russian and Syrian air forces have stopped bombing Aleppo ahead of a brief truce, a move the Kremlin said showed goodwill as it faces mounting criticism for backing a brutal regime offensive. The UN said Tuesday it was waiting for safety assurances from all sides before going in with critical humanitarian assistance for Aleppo’s desperate population. AFP Unesco adopts Jerusalem resolution • Tribune International Desk Unesco’s executive board on Tuesday approved a resolution that Israel says denies the deep historic Jewish connection to holy sites in Jerusalem - and that has angered Israel’s government and many Jews around the world, reports The Associated Press. The board adopted the measure by consensus in its morning session at Paris-based Unesco. A draft form of the resolution had already been approved by a commission last week. The resolution is not expected to have direct impact on Jerusalem itself, but it deepened tensions within Unesco, which is also facing a diplomatic dispute between Japan and China that threatens funding. The resolution, titled “Occupied Palestine,” is the latest of several measures at the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation over decades that Israelis see as evidence of ingrained anti-Israel bias within the United Nations, where Israel and its allies are far outnumbered by Arab countries and their supporters. Israel’s concern has mounted since Unesco states admitted Palestine as a member in 2011. Israel last week suspended its ties with Unesco over the draft resolution, which uses only the Islamic name for a hilltop compound sacred to both Jews and Muslims. The site includes the Western Wall, a remnant of the biblical temple and the holiest site where Jews can pray. Jews refer to the hilltop compound in Jerusalem’s Old City as the Temple Mount. Muslims refer to it as al-Haram al-Sharif, Arabic for the Noble Sanctuary, and it includes the al-Aqsa mosque and the golden Dome of the Rock. It is the holiest site in Judaism and the third holiest in Islam, after Mecca and Medina in Saudi Arabia. Israel had already suspended its funding to Unesco when Palestinian membership was approved, along with the United States, which used to provide 22% of the agency’s budget. The longstanding dispute is also linked to Israel’s refusal to grant visas to Unesco experts to go in the country and assess the level of preservation of the holy sites in Jerusalem. And now Japan, Unesco’s second-biggest funder, is threatening to halt funding. Japan announced last week it has withheld its annual Unesco dues, saying it wants to make sure the UN body properly functions to foster trust among member nations. The decision is believed linked to Unesco’s listing last year of Chinese Rape of Nanking documents as a memory of the world. • UN announces truce in new attempt to end Yemen war • AFP, Aden, Yemen The United Nations has announced a new ceasefire in war-ravaged Yemen from early Thursday, after a week of escalated fighting sparked new international calls to end the conflict. While President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi’s government and its Saudi backers said they would support the truce, there has been no word from the Iran-backed rebels who control the capital Sanaa AREAS OF CONTROL RED SEA Ras Isa Houthi rebels and forces aligned with former Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Saleh Government forces under President Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi Al Qaeda presence Al Hudaydah ERITREA Khoka Mukha DJIBOUTI Source: Risk Intelligence Hajjah Saada Sanaa Dhamar Picture: Associated Press and other areas of the Arabian Peninsula country. Yemen has been rocked by war since the Shia Huthi rebels and allied forces loyal to ousted president Ali Abdullah Saleh overran Sanaa in September 2014. The conflict escalated after a Saudi-led Arab coalition began a campaign against the rebels in March 2015. The UN says the fighting has since killed almost 6,900 people, SAUDI ARABIA Marib Manwakh YEMEN Ahwar Ataq YEMEN Detail map Al Mukallah Lawder Taiz GULF OF ADEN Zinjibar Aden: Government base 160km Bab al-Mandab Strait 100 miles © GRAPHIC NEWS In this June 17 file photo, Palestinians pray in the al-Aqsa Mosque compound during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, in Jerusalem’s Old City AP wounded more than 35,000 and displaced at least three million, with civilians paying the heaviest price amid a worsening humanitarian crisis. Unicef’s representative in Sanaa, Mohammed al-Assadi, told reporters Sunday that 10m children in Yemen need water, food, medicine, social protection, and general services. The United States, Britain and the UN peace envoy on Sunday urged the warring parties in Yemen’s civil war to declare a ceasefire. Yemeni Foreign Minister Abdulmalek al-Mekhlafi welcomed the truce which he said will be extended if the rebels adhere to it, activate a truce observing committee, end a months-long siege of Taez and allow “unrestricted” humanitarian aid into the loyalist-controlled third city. Sixth truce attempt This is the sixth attempt to establish a Yemen ceasefire. The April truce declared in conjunction with the start of peace talks in Kuwait was hardly observed on the ground, with each side blaming the other for violations. It collapsed as the talks ended in August with no breakthrough, prompting an intensified round of fighting. The Arab coalition stepped up its air raids and cross-border attacks from Yemen on Saudi Arabia intensified. One of the deadliest coalition attacks was an October 8 air raid on a funeral ceremony in Sanaa that killed 140 people and wounded 525, drawing severe criticism of the coalition, which is backed logistically by Washington. In a rapid escalation, Washington accused the rebels of targeting American warships in the Red Sea on October 9 and 12 with missiles that fell short. The US then hit radar sites in rebel-controlled territory in Washington’s first direct action against the insurgents. However, de-escalation swiftly followed as the coalition on Saturday acknowledged that one of its warplanes had “wrongly targeted” the funeral in Sanaa based on “incorrect information”. It announced disciplinary measures, compensation for the families of victims and an easing of the air blockade it enforces to allow the most seriously wounded to be evacuated for treatment abroad. On Sunday, US Secretary of State John Kerry met in London with his counterparts from Britain, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates along with the UN envoy to discuss Yemen. Earlier this month, the UN envoy had said that a 72-hour ceasefire was expected soon, adding that he hoped to draft a new Yemen peace plan. •
World FBI records: Effort to reduce Clinton email classification 20 DAYS REMAIN • Reuters, New York 100-plus Chibuk girls unwilling to leave Boko Haram • Tribune International Desk Nigeria’s government is negotiating the release of another 83 of the Chibok schoolgirls taken in a mass abduction two-and-a-half years ago, but more than 100 others appear unwilling to leave their Boko Haram Islamic extremist captors, a community leader said Tuesday, reports The Associated Press. The unwilling girls may have been radicalised by Boko Haram or are ashamed to return home because they were forced to marry extremists and have babies, chairman Pogu Bitrus of the Chibok Development Association said. Bitrus said the 21 Chibok girls freed last week in the first negotiated release between Nigeria’s government and Boko Haram should be educated abroad, because they will probably face stigma in Nigeria. The girls and their parents were reunited Sunday and are expected to meet with Nigeria’s President A senior State Department official sought to shield Hillary Clinton last year by pressuring the FBI to drop its insistence that an email on the private server she used while secretary of state contained classified information, according to records of interviews with FBI officials released on Monday. The accusation against Patrick Kennedy, the State Department’s most senior manager, appears in the latest release of interview summaries from the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s year-long investigation into Clinton’s sending and receiving classified government secrets via her unauthorised server. Although the FBI decided against declassifying the email’s contents, the claim of interference added fuel to Republicans’ belief that officials in President Barack Obama’s administration have sought to protect Clinton, a Democrat, from criminal liability as she seeks to succeed Obama in the November 8 election. The FBI recommended against bringing any charges in July and has defended the integrity of its investigation. Clinton has said her decision to use a private server in her home for her work as the US secretary of state from 2009 to 2013 was a mistake and has apologised. The dispute began in the summer of 2015 as officials were busy reviewing the roughly 30,000 emails Clinton returned to the State Department ahead of their court-ordered public release in batches in 2015 and 2016. The official said the State Department’s office of legal counsel called him to question the FBI’s ruling that the information was classified, but the FBI stood by its decision. Soon after that call, one of the official’s FBI colleagues received a call from Kennedy in which Kennedy “asked his assistance in altering the email’s classification in exchange for a ‘quid pro quo.’” The FBI official said he also joined at least two discussions in which Kennedy “continued to pressure” the FBI about the email. The official said Kennedy appeared to be trying to protect Clinton by minimising the appearance of classified information in emails from the server that Clinton used while she was the country’s most senior diplomat. Muhammadu Buhari on Tuesday or Wednesday, Bitrus said. Buhari flew to Germany on an official visit the day of the girls’ release. Some 276 schoolgirls were kidnapped from a school in northeastern Chibok in April 2014. Dozens escaped early on and at least half a dozen have died in captivity, according to the newly freed girls, Bitrus said. All those who escaped on their own have left Chibok because, even though they were held only a few hours, they were labelled “Boko Haram wives” and taunted, he said. At least 20 of the girls are being educated in the United States. Human rights advocates and the Bring Back Our Girls Movement have been asking if the girl is a detainee of the government and have been demanding she be allowed to return home, as she has requested. Previous negotiators in talks that failed also had corroborated Trump calls it collusion Other officials have made similar complaints to investigators of unusual pressure not to mark information as classified in Clinton’s emails last year. According to earlier documents the FBI released last month, at least one official at the State Department told investigators that there was pressure by senior department officials to mislead the public about the presence of classified information in Clinton’s emails ahead of their public release. A summary released on Monday showed at least two other State Department officials making similar allegations. Clinton’s Republican rival for the White House, Donald Trump, posted a video online on Monday in which he said the FBI documents showed “corruption at the highest levels.” “This is collusion between the FBI, Department of Justice and the State Department to try and make Hillary Clinton look like an innocent person when she’s guilty of very high crimes,” Trump said. Later on Monday, Trump proposed a series of ethics rules he said would crack down on government corruption, including a fiveyear ban on former administration officials lobbying after leaving government and a lifetime ban on senior officials lobbying for foreign governments. Paul Ryan, the top elected Republican in the US Congress, referred to the FBI summaries on Twitter. “This bears all the signs of a cover-up,” he wrote. In 2015, Clinton repeatedly said she never sent or received classified information via her server, but since the release of the FBI report in July she has said she relied on the judgement of her subordinates at the department. • Find more stories on US presidential election at www.dhakatribune.com NIGERIA 2014 KIDNAPPING NIGER BORNO Maiduguri Sambisa Forest reserve ABUJA CAMEROON 200 km Chibok Journalists shower Clinton with campaign cash • Tribune International Desk New Yorker television critic Emily Nussbaum, a newly minted Pulitzer Prize winner, spent the Republican National Convention pen-pricking presidential nominee Donald Trump as a misogynist shyster running an “ugly and xenophobic campaign.” What Nussbaum didn’t disclose in her dispatches: she contributed $250 to Democrat Hillary Clinton in April. In all, people identified in federal campaign finance filings as journalists, reporters, news editors or television news anchors — as well as other donors known to be working in journalism — have combined to give more than $396,000 to the presidential campaigns of Clinton and Trump, according to a Center for Public Integrity analysis. Nearly all of that money — more than 96% — has benefited Clinton: About 430 people who work in journalism have, through August, combined to give about $382,000 to the Democratic nominee, the Center for Public Integrity’s analysis indicates. • Banki April 14, 2014 Boko Haram jihadists seize 276 schoolgirls 57 of them escaped, leaving 219 captured May 18, 2016 Nigerian army confirms one of the kidnapped girls has been found in Sambisa Forest area October 13, 2016 Nigerian officials announce release of 21 girls after talks between government and Boko Haram that more than 100 of the girls did not want to return to their parents, Bitrus said. Chibok is a small and conservative Christian enclave in mainly Muslim northern Nigeria, where many parents are involved in translating the Bible into local languages and belong to the Nigerian branch of the Elgin, Illinois-based Church of the Brethren. Nigeria’s government has denied reports that the girls were swapped for four Boko Haram commanders, or that a large ransom was paid. • 9 WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 19, 2016 DT USA Trump’s charity stops fundraising in New York state Donald Trump’s charitable foundation has stopped fundraising in New York state, the state attorney general’s office said on Monday, weeks after the office warned that a failure to do so would constitute a continuing fraud. The organisation has been under increased scrutiny following reports in the Washington Post suggesting possible improprieties within the small-scale nonprofit organisation. REUTERS THE AMERICAS Venezuela court raises new obstacle to recall vote Venezuela’s Supreme Court has raised another obstacle to an opposition drive for a referendum on recalling leftist President Nicolas Maduro, who is blamed for a deepening economic and political crisis. In a ruling Monday the Supreme Court raised the bar even higher by making it 20% of the electorate in each of the country’s 24 states in order to force a recall vote. AFP UK Police probe rape allegation inside UK parliament British police are investigating an allegation of rape at the Houses of Parliament against an aide to a Conservative Party MP, the politician’s spokesman said on Tuesday. London’s Metropolitan Police on Monday announced an investigation into the alleged rape which is said to have occurred in the early hours of October 14. AFP EUROPE Spain to decide on enabling new government The leadership of Spain’s Socialists meet on Sunday to decide whether to enable their conservative rivals to form a minority government, thereby ending ten months of political deadlock. With just under two weeks to go until a deadline to form a government, the Socialist gathering is widely seen as a make-or-break summit that will determine whether Spain will manage to avoid its third general election in a year. REUTERS AFRICA Inter-ethnic violence kills dozen in Congo More than a dozen people have died since the weekend in fighting in southeastern Congo between Bantus and Pygmies. The Luba, a Bantu ethnic group, and the Twa, a Pygmy people who inhabit the Great Lakes region, have been in conflict since May 2013 in Democratic Republic of Congo’s Katanga region, known for its rich deposits of copper and other metals. REUTERS
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Page 3 and 4: News 3 WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 19, 2016
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Page 11 and 12: Advertisement 11 WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER
Page 13 and 14: Business 13 DT WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 1
Page 15 and 16: Business 15 World markets climb on
Page 17 and 18: Feature 17 WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 19, 2
Page 19 and 20: Biz Info 19 WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 19,
Page 21 and 22: Opinion 21 Thailand as we knew it i
Page 23 and 24: Opinion 23 The politburo of literat
Page 25 and 26: England cricketers, led by Test cap
Page 27 and 28: Sport 27 ‘Summer to make or break
Page 29 and 30: Downtime 29 WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 19,
Page 31 and 32: CheckMate: Showtime No one has to f

ePaper_2nd Edition_October 19, 2016

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